Find Lesson Plans

This lesson is designed to help students understand that Classical music can refer to music composed during a period in music history known as the Classical Period rather than the style of all symphonic music. The students will be given a brief overview of the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern Periods of music. Next, students will learn about the lives of two famous composers of the Classical Period, Beethoven and Mozart.

Students move and listen to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, second movement Andante molto mosso, known as Scene by the Brook, as they imagine taking a journey with Beethoven along a path. They focus on the dynamics and tempo of the music and work to build their own personal image of what it might look like and feel like to take a walk with Beethoven beside a brook. As they listen to the entire Symphony No. 6, students will work in teams to create a visual representation of each movement using oil pastels.

In this lesson, students will analyze and explore story elements while listening to the first movement, Allegro ma non troppo, of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the Pastoral Symphony. Students will be able to define setting, plot, theme, and imagery (figurative language) and identify the above elements in a story. Students will apply their knowledge and create their own story elements.

In this lesson, students will continue practicing sequencing (putting events in a logical order) after listening to the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, first movement, Allegro con brio. Students will create a storyboard with pictures and captions to describe the events that developed as they listened to the music. This lesson will encourage students to listen to music to develop a story. They will complete a storyboard to draw and then write the sequence of events that occurred throughout the music.

Using Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, students will discover how difficult it is to compose music with a hearing loss. Children will develop an understanding of overcoming disabilities and preserving through life's struggles. Students will learn how to compose four bars of music using 4-4 time.

Students will recognize and identify the sounds of different orchestral instruments; learn and use the tempo markings from the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9; research the similarities between adaptations in nature and variations in music/visual art; and create visual art which illustrates the connection among natural adaptations and music variations.

After studying the life of Ludwig van Beethoven, students will listen to, become familiar with, and identify distinguishing characteristics of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, the "Pastoral". Selected landscape art will be explored and correlated with specific movements of the symphony. The sonnet, On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven by Edna St. Vincent Millay, will be interpreted. Student poetry elicted by an imagninary walk in the meadow with Beethoven will be illusutrated with their art.